22 September 2013

Is The New IPCC Report 'Doomsday' For EnviroNazis?

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's next report will 'dial back the alarm.'

By Byron York

Talk about bad timing. Last month, environmental activists launched a well-funded new attack on Republican"climate change deniers"
in hopes of making global warming a big issue in 2014. But as the
campaign gets underway, a new report from the world's leading climate
scientists could leave environmentalists on the defensive, and the
"deniers" more confident and assertive.

"HOLDING CLIMATE CHANGE DENIERS ACCOUNTABLE" read the headline of a
League of Conservation Voters press release announcing a $2 million
barrage of ads aimed at Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, as well as GOP
Reps. Mike Coffman, Dan Benishek and Rodney Davis. "We're changing the
terms of the climate change debate," said an LCV spokesman. "It's no
longer acceptable to be a member of Congress and deny basic science."

'There's no way Congress will consider upending the American economy with
far-reaching tax or regulatory schemes on the basis of flawed computer
projections about a phenomenon that may or may not require any action at
all.'

Organizing for Action, the permanent arm of the Obama campaign,
joined in, staging events and running an ad — 'CALL OUT THE CLIMATE
CHANGE DENIERS!!!' — targeting House Speaker John Boehner and Sen. Marco Rubio, among others.

The goal is to place opposition to the global warming agenda — heavy
environmental regulation, a cap-and-trade or carbon tax program, massive
"green energy" expenditures, huge international wealth transfers —
outside the realm of polite discussion. But the discussion is about to
change.

On Sept. 27, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change will release its fifth report on global warming. Earlier IPCC
assessments — the most recent was in 2007 — were the foundation for
reams of alarmist reporting. For example, after a 2009 update, the
Washington Post ran a story headlined "New Analysis Brings Dire Forecast,"
reporting that a predicted 6.3-degree Fahrenheit increase in world
temperatures "is nearly double what scientists and world policymakers
have identified as the upper limit of warming the world can afford in
order to avert catastrophic climate change.

That was then. Now, the new IPCC document will "dial back the alarm," in the words of a Wall Street Journal preview.
According to the Journal, the report will state that "the temperature
rise we can expect as a result of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide
is lower than the IPCC thought in 2007." The computer forecasts used to
produce those forecasts, it turns out, were wrong.

The effect could be enormous. If scientists now predict that the
earth will warm less, and less quickly, than earlier thought — and also
concede that the planet has not warmed at all in the last decade or so —
the position of the environmental activists, and groups like Organizing
for Action, will be significantly weaker. They'll have a harder time
arguing for drastic and immediate action.

The downgrading of the warming threat, writes the Journal, "points to
the very real possibility that, over the next several generations, the
overall effect of climate change will be positive for humankind and the
planet." It will be hard to argue for a doomsday scenario on the basis
of that.

But after more than a decade of increasingly frantic predictions, the
activists will not fold their tents and go home. "The climateers have
been doing vigorous 'battle space preparation' ahead of the report,"
says Steven Hayward, a conservative scholar who writes frequently about
the politics and science of global warming. "They're priming the media
to say 'we're still doomed,' even though the case for doom has been
badly eroded over the last couple of years."

Given how deeply the IPCC is invested in the issue — it shared the
Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore in 2007 — there's little doubt the report
will give environmental activists at least something to work with. For
example, it appears IPCC scientists will declare even more forcefully
than before that they are absolutely certain human activity is causing
warming. They will repeat previous calls for action against warming on a
global scale. There will still be dire warnings.

But the political debate will change. There's no way Congress will
consider upending the American economy with far-reaching tax or
regulatory schemes on the basis of flawed computer projections about a
phenomenon that may or may not require any action at all. The activists
can produce as many ads as they want. They can call opponents "deniers"
all they like. It just won't work.

SoRo: Let's take a stroll down Henny Penny Lane:

'October 2008 had the hottest global temperatures on record.'

- James Hansen, NASA Goddard Institute Space Studies

FACT: No, it wasn’t. In 2007, NASA was forced to correct a serious mathematical error, and "1934 is now known as thewarmest year on record,
with 1921 the third warmest year instead of 2006 as was also
previously claimed. Moreover, NASA now also has to admit that three of
the five warmest years on record occurred before 1940-it has up until
now held that all five of them occurred after 1980.'

JAMES HANSEN:'Damn! Damn! Damn! How
did I make that mistake? I truly, truly, truly promise that I didn’t
mean to use corrupted Russian data from September.'

HANSEN:'Slap
upside my head! Slap upside my head! I really, really, really am
telling you the truth when I say that I didn’t intentionally hide the
decline and overlook the fact that 5 of the top ten hottest years in the last century -- 1921, 1931, 1934, 1938, and 1939 – before jets, SUVs, mass air conditioning, etc. I swear. Would I lie to you?'

'Global temperatures have continued to rise every year.'- James Hansen, NASA Goddard Institute Space Studies

HANSEN & GORE:'Well, we didn’t
mean continuously. Global warming means that there will also be
periods of prolonged global cooling.'

'The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water.'- James Hansen, NASA Goddard Institute Space Studies, 1988

FACT:I can see it. It’s not. And, if you really did mean 40 years, that water had better start rising because it actuallyhasn't changed at all.

HANSEN:'Um, is anyone else warm? I’m getting a little warm. Can someone turn the air down?'

'Under
the greenhouse effect, extreme weather increases. Depending on where
you are in terms of the hydrological cycle, you get more of whatever
you’re prone to get. New York can get droughts, the droughts can get
more severe and you’ll have signs in restaurants saying “Water by
request only.'

- James Hansen, NASA Goddard Institute Space Studies

FACT:No, there's still plenty of water available....tap,
fizzy, or specially-made sparkling tap water ... prices for the latter two
available upon request.

HANSEN:‘Um, I am really, really beginning to feel
uncomfortable.May I get a glass of
water, please?’

'The
glaciers in the Himalayas are receding quicker than those in other
parts of the world and could disappear altogether by 2035.'

- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 report

FACT: No, they aren’t. The 'prestigious' IPCC cribbed that hysterical charge from a World Wildlife Fund 2005report on panda bears(see p.11), which it had palmed from an article titled"Flooded Out" in the New Scientist magazine (not a journal, but a sort of Popular Mechanics
for the DIY science community). The original article quoted Professor
Syed Hasnain, then Chairman of the International Commission for Snow
and Ice's (ICSI) Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology, who said most
of the glaciers in the Himalayan region "will vanish within 40 years as
a result of global warming." The fact that Hasnain, of Jawaharlal
Nehru University in Delhi, has never repeated the prediction in a peer-reviewed journalwas
disregarded, overlooked, obscured, undisclosed, secreted, sequestered,
shrouded, and suppressed by the “consensus” of the IPCC.

Professor Syed Hasnain later said the comment was 'speculative'and blamed the IPCC for misusing a remark he made to a journalist and is on the record saying, 'the
magic number of 2035 has not [been] mentioned in any research papers
written by me, as no peer-reviewed journal will accept speculative
figures' and 'it isnot properfor IPCC to include references from popular magazines or newspapers.'

GAIAN
CULTISTS:“OK, well, Chairman Pachauri was really, really busy trying
to get Harlequin Romances to publish his enviro, smutty bodice-ripper,
shag fest, GaianPussyGalore book, “Return to Almora,” so it was just an accident. OF COURSE, it is correct in spirit, even if it is off by hundreds, if not thousands or millions of years.'

'55% of the Netherlands is underwater.'

- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 report

FACT: Not exactly. Only 26% is and that land is largely protected by the most sophisticated lock and levee system in the world.

'Up
to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a
slight reduction in precipitation; this means that the tropical
vegetation, hydrology and climate system in South America could change
very rapidly to another steady state, not necessarily producing gradual
changes between the current and the future situation.…'

'Children just aren’t going to know what snow is...within a few years, winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event.'

- Dr David Viner, Senior Research Scientist and the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, 2000

FACT: No. This statement was made before one of the worst winters in 100 years, which was followed by the second coldest winter (2010-11) since records began in 1659.
The chilliest on record was 1683/84, when the average was -1.17C and
the River Thames froze over for two months. In Europe, the 2010-11
winter was predicted to have been the worst in 1,000 years.

GAIAN CULTISTS:'Liars, Damn Deniers, and Statistics!'

'Global warming means no snow or cold weather in DC.'

- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., September 2008

FACT:Thatwas 15 months before DC wasfrozen under tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of snow.

RFK:'But, global warming means MORE
snow, not less, silly! By the way, dude, do you know where I can
score some really good smack? Did I ever tell you about how I used to
grow eco-friendly poppies out on The Compound?'

'We have less than 100 months to stop climate change disaster.'

- Prince Charles, March 2009

FACT: The imagined catastrophe he hopes to avoid is otherwise due in July 2017
and he obviously didn't realise what a disaster that President Barack
Obama would turn out to be. If Obama is reelected, the world won't
have to wait until July 2017 for Armageddon.